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A friend of mine contacted me with the following and wondered what something like this would be worth since he might be considering selling it . Any advice guys?

Here is the story and pics

Hi Miranda,

Attached as promised some photos of the helmet. Just a reminder how I got it. My dad is a fibrous plasterer and back in the 1970’s he worked on many films. He worked on the Empire Strikes Back and whilst on set for many weeks made friends with the props and costume designers and was offered a copy helmet made from the original cast, it was then passed to me. Over the years of storage the thin fiberglass became damaged on the edges and 10 years ago I had the edges repaired and the helmet had a re spray.

As I said on the RPF. Definitely interesting. Just love the look of that dome. Face mask looks strange, but it could be down to too thickly applied paint. It has some warping to the face though... might have been a dud?

Dome is definitely RotJ style at the widows peak detail. Very interesting if this comes from the ESB production.

The facemask has been trimmed before the rear undercut. There's a whole bunch of rear helmet missing. Any chance of getting these two or just the top one as large as that dome picture, preferably with the watermark not obscuring the neck extension ridge. Would love to see how that shape is.

The presence of a neck extension puts it in the UK mold style of helmets - those used for production of ESB and a few fan owned helmets. The chin vent, though UK style, looks to have been carved out along the ridge, making the ridge wider. Something has been done to the tips of the tusk tubes - they could have been broken and then repaired. There's some warping and the whole back of the head is missing. I drew a rough outline indicating where the back of the face mask would normally extend back to.

Definitely an interesting piece. Does he have any pictures of it prior to the fixing up and repaint?

In the authentic casts section you can find a gallery of various helmets and with the TM you can see the kind of neck extension we've seen previously. It's way shorter than the one on this cast, but was it like that to begin with or did the owner extend it when doing the repairs?

There you can also see how a typical ESB dome looks. Down with the VP helmet, you can see how the RotJ dome looks and I must admit that this one looks more like a RotJ one.

If these were to be sold, I'd think the dome has the most value of the set.

IMO this should stay in the fan made section. It looks too removed from any screen casting.

Whoever cast this was a novice, at best. One of the reasons the mask looks so odd is it is severely warped and the owner (or whoever) tried to rework it and fix it. Look how shallow the mask is, too... lots of bondo built-up on the sides/top, to try to fix that, most likely. The 'dome' is interesting... at least it's probably not warped, but again, the layup was by a novice... like the gelcoat (or even just resin) was spead inside hastily... creating all the little bubbles... and a thin layer of fiberglass... ignore these things and the parts look promising... lol.

Oh, I was just suggesting the OP and owner could look at other castings with lineage and how they usually look. Especially in regards to the neck extension. But I agree, too much work has been done on this and the casting of the face mask in particular is not the best. We've heard several stories of casts being made to crewmembers and people who wanted one. Can't imagine they took the greatest care when making those casts and must have been somewhat of a rush job, getting it cast quickly.

Again, though there are several casting flaws, I still think the dome is the most valuable of the lot... I'll rank the face mask on part with a bad Don Post or even a Rubies Supreme in terms of accuracy. However, some of it can be due to the repaint, so it would be a wrong assessment to say either way, unless it was stripped... but seeing as it may be thin and flimsy... stripping it may damage it.

I still like the look and shape of the dome. Was that repaired as well? Hope the owner finds pictures of it prior to the rework.

And again, thanks for showing this off. Always cool to see new pieces.

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